This is the root of the problem. Wikimedia rises too much money
100% agree and it’s endemic to the people running any organization not held accountable. There’s a port authority near me that was formed to maintain key bridges. The tolls on these bridges is exorbitant.
The people who run the authority use it as their own personal slush fund, donating money to things like ballet schools and other pet projects.
Maybe these projects are the most worthy thing in the world but forcing people to donate to them under threat of arrest (for not paying bridge tolls) is immoral.
But the post also said misappropriating the funds “is a minor issue”.
It’s not a minor issue to say you’re raising funds for X and to then give those funds to Y just because it only amount to Z% of your budget. And in this case Z% is actually pretty high.
25 years of a loose confederation of unpaid developers working on a code base with frequent updates and improvements. If this is the worst that can be said about it, they're doing pretty darn good.
There can be exceptions to this but I have never heard of a chargeback over this period and certainly charges a year or two old would be crazy.
Maybe what happened is that the cardholder initiated a chargeback on the most recent charges and Upwork decided on their own to refund them all?
In any case, it is primarily Upwork’s job to validate credit cards. If their position is that they failed to do that for two years and they have no responsibility, that is wrong.
At the top of the linked article is a link to a previous blog entry entitled "A Genius????" that lists a bunch of "smart" things he's done that presumably qualify him for being a genius but that he cringes at calling himself that.
You said, "after experiencing very bad service from Azure".
Now that you give details it doesn't seem to fit what you said. Sounds like your issues were pricing (no trial, higher cost, fewer resources per $) and your confusion with Microsoft "jargon". That doesn't equal very bad service to me.